Lonely
by Dragon Toes
Summary: What brought Eli back to Oskar? Spoilers for book. One shot.


_What is this?_

He could not get it out of his head. As soon as the taxi had pulled away from the apartment complex, something had bubbled up in Eli. Something he could not name; it was heavy, suffocated his insides like a drenched blanket. As he moved farther and farther from Blackeberg, the more cumbersome _it_ felt. Like tar, slowly dripping down and covering _everything._ He was drowning in it. The most maddening part was the familiarity. An acquaintance from years ago; one who could not be named, but the face—you knew that face. On the tip of the tongue, but would just not come forth. Eli thought he would go mad if this puzzle went unsolved.

Yesterday he rode the train as long as he could before time ran out and he had to find refuge from the coming dawn in a tiny village. He haggled his way into a seedy motel—it was the only place that would provide lodging for a twelve-year-old. Eli mentally cursed the woman who had been at the desk, her raspy smoker's voice mocking him.

"Well little girl, where are your parents? Do you think I can run the risk of renting to a kid? I'm not running an orphanage here. Scram, or come back with your parents."

She lit up a cigarette using the butt of the previous one. Eli wished her horrible dyed-dark hair would catch on fire. That she'd explode into flames. He hated being twelve.

"I have money."

The woman's road-worn skin shifted and allowed an odious smile.

"How much?"

She must have charged Eli triple what the room was worth. If he was not so dejected by the lead in his soul, the price would have bought him dinner as well. But all he wanted was quiet, dark, numb sleep.

The next evening Eli took a taxi farther north. Miles ticked past as the car drove by ice crusted wilderness. Silence sat in the cab with them; the driver repeatedly had tried to strike up conversation with his passenger, but Eli made the exchange as difficult as possible, emitting only discouraging grunts and mhmms. He wished he had one of those music boxes, like Oskar's, the one he broke. The train was preferable to a taxi, less interaction, less temptation. But he had realized the train was a game of Russian roulette. If he couldn't get to a stop in time, he would die in a flameburst.

However, the thought did not terrify him as it had in the past. He didn't think he had it in him to struggle as he had to get back to his apartment after fleeing from Hakan. It was strange, to be apathetic about dawn. Fight the sun? Why bother? His mind slipped back to the other woman he had met who shared his affliction.

_"We are so few. So few."_

_"Why?"_

_"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my."_

Melodramatic. But Eli had always wondered why he had not done like many of the others for so long. He had always chalked it up to his childish want to live just being stronger than any sense of guilt or... or...

He found himself tapping on the plastic interior of the door of the taxi. Long, long, long. Short, short short. Long, short, long. O-S-K...

Loneliness.

Guilt or loneliness. That was what was pressing down on him. Eli was lonely. He _missed_ someone. He had forgotten what it felt like. Loneliness had clung to him for two hundred years, he had grown used to it, but it had lifted recently, unceremoniously. Life had just started to be better without him realizing it. The plague that had filled his endless days had been warded off by the tormented blond boy, as if his Rubik's Cube held a magic cure. Before that night in the courtyard, that was the last time he had felt this oppressive weight. Since the pangs for his mother left centuries prior, he hadn't had anyone to miss.

There had been many people Eli had convinced to bring him blood to survive. Caretakers. Hakan was one of them. Eli shivered in disgust. He never liked Hakan. Hated him, but he had, until the end, done his job without complaint. Hunger had won out, so he kept him around. Eli knew why it had been so easy to get the man to butcher people like hogs for him. Waves rocked in Eli's stomach when he thought about the half-melted, putrid corpse trying miserably to force its way inside of him. Trying to fuck him with the same fervor that coursed through Eli when he was starving for blood.

_But I do it to survive, perverted old fart._

Eli's repulsion did not cave for a moment even to the thought of when Hakan would cry and declare his love. Lies. He loved his little, undeveloped body. He loved that he could deceive himself by thinking that because Eli had been alive for centuries, that he was not a child. Gross. The caretakers he had were no one to miss. Especially not Hakan.

But Oskar, sweet Oskar... He was someone to miss. Oskar liked him. He didn't like him because he was cool, or a girl, or a boy. He was not particularly fond of him being a vampire, or the fact he often smelled like death and did "gross" things, like wear clothes from the garbage. Despite failing to be a normal little girl, Oskar still came knocking at Eli's door and would lay cuddled with him at night. Eli missed Oskar. He might love him. But now he was far behind, in Blackeberg, alone.

_Oskar is alone. But not as alone as me._

The idea shot through the dark self-pity in Eli's mind and illuminated a thought briefly. Alone. What happened before when Oskar was alone. The subway. Those boys.

"Stop the car."

"Excuse me, miss?"

"Stop the car!"

Before the driver had even thought of slowing the car, Eli began to open the door. The cabbie stomped the brakes, halting their movement abruptly. Eli jumped out and and tore at his shirt as the man rolled his window down to question the seemingly crazed child.

"Whoa! What on earth... we're in the middle of nowhere. It's not safe for you to get out here."

"Leave!" Eli quickly threw all of his remaining kronors through the window at the man, "GO!"

"It's not..."

Eli didn't have time for this. He hunched over, feeling the skin between his arms and body grow, stretch. He looked up at the man and growled, eyes flashing and sharp teeth bared as webbing formed wings, reminiscent of a bat's.

"Ggggggo away!"

The taxi driver's face had grown paler than winter's furies. He rolled up his window and stomped on the gas with more strength than had brought them to a stop. Eli scrambled up a tree, and lept off, wings catching the air in order to race south, to Blackeberg.

_Oskar... Oskar... I'm coming for you Oskar. And when I get there, anyone who has dared to mess with you will not see the next day's sun._


End file.
